Top A-level grades are up – but worrying regional disparities remain | A-levels

Many students in England receiving their A-level grades on Thursday will be happy after overall results showed an increase in the number of As and A*s, exceeding not only last year’s results, but those recorded before the disruption caused by the pandemic. Nevertheless, disparities remain between northern and southern England, and in Northern Ireland and Wales where results fell compared with last year, as well as between private and state schools.

It is the second year in England that A-level and GCSE assessment has returned to pre-pandemic norms. Exams were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 after Covid closed schools for long periods, and A-level grades based on teachers’ predictions led to a sharp spike in top results.

There has since been a gradual return towards 2019 norms, with students last year seeing a sharp fall in top A-level grades on the previous two years, as planned. Experts in the sector had warned of a possible further fall this year, to bring results back in line with 2019, but this did not materialise in England, with 9.3% of entries gaining A* grades, up on 8.6% last year, and 7.7% in 2019.

For As and A*s, 27.6% of entries gained the two highest grades, compared with 26.5% last year and 25.2% in 2019. England’s qualifications regulator, Ofqual, rejected any suggestion of a return to grade inflation, putting this year’s improved results down to the strength of the cohort, whose chances will have been improved by sitting GCSEs – as opposed to receiving teacher-assessed grades – and as a result making better informed choices about which A-level courses to follow.

In contrast, it is the first year that other parts of the UK have returned to pre-pandemic assessment, without any exam adjustments, and as a result there were falls in attainment, as expected. In Northern Ireland, 30.3% of entrants achieved A or A*, down by seven percentage points compared with 2023, while in Wales the proportion fell from 34% to 27.6%, but both remained higher than in 2019.

Despite the jump in top grades, there remain huge and concerning regional differences in England, as in previous years, with areas in the north still lagging far behind London and the south-east. While every region saw an increase in top grades, London had the highest proportion of As and A*s at 31.3%, up 1.3 percentage points on last year. The lowest proportion was in the East Midlands, with 22.5%, up 0.2 points on 2023.

Myles McGinley, the director of regulation at the exam board OCR, welcomed an improvement in results for north-east England, which had the lowest proportion of top grades last year at 22% and saw its share increasing to 23.9% this year, slightly closing the gap with London and the south-east. The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has already identified the regional disparities in attainment as a key concern which the new government is keen to address. This year’s results suggest change will be slow.

Though students this year had the benefit of sitting GCSE exams, they still suffered two years of disruption due to Covid, and it is likely many students’ performance will reflect that, with low attendance, the cost of living and the disruption caused by the Raac crisis having affected many. One headteacher said top grades were up in his school’s results: “But there is a squishy bit in the middle – students who might have seen higher GCSE grades than normal in 2022, due to adjustments being in place, who might be disappointed with their A-level results.”

Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said: “I’m concerned the A-level results this year will show growing academic divides, fuelled by Covid learning losses, record-level school absences and rising child poverty. This will be demonstrated by stark achievement gaps between state and private schools, regional disparities in achievements, amid falling numbers of the poorest students applying for university.”

The other striking story from this year’s results is the huge and growing popularity of maths, which becomes the first A-level to exceed 100,000 entries, while 17,000 pupils took further maths, making it the subject with the biggest year-on-year growth in student numbers, up 20% on last year. There were also increases in physics, computing and other sciences, with English literature and French also seeing growth in numbers, possibly as a result of improved availability of language teachers.

While there was great enthusiasm from some quarters for the growth in maths, others sounded a note of caution. Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “It is great to see that maths continues its all-conquering trajectory as the most popular A-level subject, but other subjects, such as creative arts and design and technology, have fared less well over the past decade.

“This is a result of previous government policy which has tended to marginalise these subjects. It is worrying to see a further significant decline in entries to drama this year, and we hope that the new government’s curriculum and assessment review will champion these subjects as they are vital both to our cultural life and our economy.”